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Four days of meetings, readings, music, exhibitions and workshops confirmed the strength of a festival that, for twenty years, has brought a community together around books and ideas.

Gavoi (NU), 6 July 2026 – The 20th edition of L’Isola delle Storie – Sardinia’s Literary Festival came to a close yesterday in Gavoi. From 2 to 5 July it brought back to the heart of Barbagia authors, journalists and artists, together with a large and engaged audience who came to share four days of books, dialogues, music, exhibitions, workshops and meetings.

Twenty years after its birth, the festival confirmed one of its most precious qualities: the ability to gather full squares around stories and the most urgent questions of the present. At a time when cultural participation cannot be taken for granted, Gavoi continues to be a place where the audience chooses to stop, listen, discuss, ask questions, engage with complex themes and share time and attention.

The 20th edition opened on Thursday 2 July with the inauguration of the exhibitions and visual projects spread throughout the village and with Carapace, the musical show by Roy Paci that launched the festival in the Giardino Comunale.

Among the edition’s most recognisable spaces, Mezzogiorno di Fuoco was confirmed once again as one of the festival’s most eagerly awaited: an appointment devoted to debate on international current affairs, bringing together different voices, expertise, experiences and points of view. From Iran to Ukraine and the Middle East, the meetings brought to the squares of Gavoi questions that run through our present every day, returning them to the complexity of stories, testimonies and people’s lives.

The festival days then moved through Italian and international literature, journalism, philosophy, readings and storytelling, with meetings able to hold together books, thought, memory and current affairs. From the conversations of Dal Balcone – Universi al femminile with Maria Attanasio, Nadeesha Uyangoda and Elvira Mujčić, to the appointments of Esercizi di Meraviglia with Maura Gancitano, Andrea Colamedici, Matteo Saudino and Eleonora Caruso; from the international voices of Joanna Bator, Eshkol Nevo and Widad Tamimi, to the readings by Saba Anglana, Fabio Genovesi and Francesco Pacifico, up to the evenings with Francesco Abate and Giancarlo De Cataldo, the programme returned the plurality of perspectives that characterises the festival.

As always, an important part of the edition was dedicated to children and teenagers, with the programme curated by the Lughenè Cultural Association. Books, workshops, readings, theatre, comics, cinema, music and shows created opportunities for encounter between generations, languages and different ways of approaching stories. From Storie in gioco – the reading contest that involves children through the work of local libraries, this year won by Gavoi itself – to the workshops of writing, drawing, reading, movement and sound, up to the Parata strampalata that closed the journey on Sunday afternoon.

Art too was a protagonist of the festival days, with exhibitions and visual projects spread throughout the village: NODI by Marco Ceraglia, curated by MAN – Museo d’Arte della Provincia di Nuoro, at the Museo del Fiore Sardo; the photographic tribute to Daniela Zedda along the streets of the centre; the illustration exhibition Certe forme lo distraevano continuamente by Lucio Schiavon and the bibliographic exhibition Dove finisce il libro comincia il tuo viaggio, curated by Lughenè, at the Ex Caserma; the installation Ombre dell’Isola by BAM Design and Angelo Monne in piazza San Gavino.

The twentieth edition was not only an anniversary, but the confirmation of a story that keeps renewing itself in the relationship with the village, in the care of its places, in the large presence of volunteers, and in the dialogue with institutions, libraries, schools, cultural partners and the public. A milestone that also belongs to all the people, organisations and institutions that over these twenty years have walked, for a longer or shorter stretch, the road of the festival. For twenty years L’Isola delle Storie has been born from books and grown within a community that every summer comes back together around words, listening and the pleasure of being together.

On digital channels too the festival was followed by a wide and engaged audience, through social media and live streaming. In the coming days it will be possible to keep following the story of the edition just ended on L’Isola delle Storie’s social channels and to watch again the meetings streamed on the Festival’s YouTube channel.

Fact sheet

L’Isola delle Storie – 20th edition, Sardinia’s Literary Festival
2–5 July 2026
Gavoi (NU), Barbagia, Sardinia
Free admission

Organisation
L’Isola delle Storie Cultural Association
via Garibaldi 2, 08020 Gavoi (NU)
info@isoladellestorie.it – www.isoladellestorie.it

Press office
Francesca Zanardo – GLASS studio
zanardo@glass-studio.it – t. +39 328 4780660